i'm joined by ed schultz, reverend al sharpton, chris hayes, steve schmidt. lawrence o'donnell is our man in the spin room tonight. the one and only chris matthews is at centre college in danville, kentucky, the site of tonight's debate. chris, is this unusually high stakes for a vice presidential debate? >> well, it's great being with you, again, rachel, and everyone else tonight at msnbc. look, it's great. it's great in its importance because of what happened last week. the frustration from the democratic base, i expressed it a acceleratisimilar version of the frustration of the failure of the president to bring out all this issues that his paid advertising, speeches have made all year but for some reason he didn't bring up. the most powerful issues. i'm going to one through four or five. by one word. you know the one word. vouchers. the way paul ryan wants to deal with health care which won't work for medicare. personhood. the way he wants to basically in effect criminalize, turn it into murder abortion decisions. the emergency room. where this presidentia